Around the World: Part Three

In which a city was viewed through its Eye

07.05.2019: Tour Day 1, Country 1, City 1

Remember the Vande Mataram song of the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham! I watched the city on TV in 2001 and now in 2019 I am going to watch it in real. Every one of us was excited. We boarded our bus; our coach captain for the day was Aushman. My neighbor in the bus was Deepti Kulkarni (we lovingly called her Kolhapur Kaku). Akhilesh elaborated on the tour and gave the preliminary instructions which included 3Ps (Passport, Punctuality, Patience) and 3Cs (Coach, Cuisine, Climate). As we entered the city, after an hour and half drive from the Airport; the street shops of London felt like the logo quiz game because most of the logos were names of the shops here. The roads were clean, pay and use bicycles were parked, the buses were red in color, River Thames was flowing on the right connecting the either sides by bridges.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is an island nation in northwestern Europe. Today’s sightseeing was the Millennium Wheel, famous as the London Eye, Lambeth, South London.

The London Eye Ride

The London Eye is a 443ft tall cantilevered observation wheel; consists of 32 ovoid passenger capsules attached to its external circumference. Each capsule represents a London Borough (borough means a district), has an oval wooden seat in the center and can occupy 25 people. The capsules are numbered from 1 to 33 (excluding no. 13). One revolution of the capsule takes 30 minutes, so you have half an hour to view the whole city from its eye.

Capsule at its topmost position

We reached the venue at quarter to noon. The bus was parked near the garden. We walked towards the wheel; the garden was full of groups of school kids. First, we enjoyed the 4D Cinema Experience. There was a photo shop wall on the way to the theater. We picked up the glasses and entered the theater. Apart from the light and sound effects, we also enjoyed the water bubbles, wind and the snow in the end. The approx. five minutes experience gave a bird’s eye view of the city. We queued up for the ride, our tickets were scanned. We got into the capsule. There was a London Eye River Cruise on the river Thames. Towards right, there was a railway bridge over the river. We all were so glued to our cameras in capturing the moments that we didn’t realize that time passed by. As we got off the capsule, there were souvenirs shops at the right.

We proceeded towards our lunch restaurant, Bangalore Express themed with the Malgudi Days on its wall. Our lunch area was a level down. We were waiting for quite some time on the street for our bus. The moment we viewed the bus; all the ladies crossed the road except for three of us and Akhilesh. Of course, he would be annoyed by whatever happened. Roads were to be crossed only on the Zebra Crossing near the signals. We all got a warning speech on this. We drove towards Hotel Atrium. We reached the hotel and our luggage was unloaded. We waited in the dining area for the room keys allotment. There was twin sharing on Women Special Tours. But here I was lucky to get a single room. If you have a roommate, you do share some incidents of your life with each other. I missed this, but I did get used to staying alone in a room. 

I had to do a bit of R&D with the Travel Adapter. We must unlock the pins where it was indicated as UK and then again lock it. Otherwise the adapter will be thrown out of the socket. I called up home through WhatsApp. I went down for the dinner at 08:15pm. Here I met Ritali Malvadkar and Neha Udeshi. We joined the dinner table with Suman Bal and Minu Tumkurkar and talked a lot while having the food. Beena Murkute and her daughter Swamini joined us later. Swamini is a school going girl, would be studying in Grade 9 post this vacation. There were many other Veena World Tours going parallel, some of those guests were staying in the same hotel. The magic numbers for tomorrow were 6-7-8 (6am Wake up call, 7 is Breakfast, 8am Bus departure). The next day was a city orientation tour along with a tour guide. To avoid the morning hassle, I keep all the items required in an order on the table. It starts from toothpaste and brush, till the comb and perfume; also, the set of clothes I am supposed to wear tomorrow. I checked the door lock once again, got the mobile fully charged and set the alarm for 05:30am. After penning down the keywords of whatever happened so far, I dozed off.

Read next: Around the World: Part Four